Firefly's Blue Ghost has Left Earth Orbit

In an update for flight week three, we read Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar landing mission has completed its lunar orbit insertion engine burn on Saturday, Feb. 8, and is on its way to the moon.  The next phase of the mission is the four day journey to the moon, entering lunar orbit

In the coming days, Firefly will perform a series of burns—including a four-minute main engine firing on its four-day journey to lunar orbit. Blue Ghost will then attempt its Moon landing at the beginning of March. 

Firefly's mission to the moon is around six weeks long and that was planned after time studying the various options.  The launch was January 15th from the Kennedy Space Center side of the Cape, LC-39A, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 that was also carrying a lunar lander from ispace in Japan, which will take even longer to get to the moon.  

So why did they choose their six week voyage to the moon?  It wasn't simply to use a lower cost launch vehicle - they don't even mention that.

Firefly opted for a circuitous, month-and-a-half-long journey to the Moon, which allowed onboard payloads to gather more data—and gave the company time to check systems before the main event.

“If we were going just straight to the Moon, we wouldn’t really have time to fix anything that was coming up,” Ray Allensworth, Firefly’s spacecraft program director, told Payload. 

One by one, test by test, Blue Ghost has worked properly.  The first big test, actually "do or die" for the lander, was firing up the spacecraft’s engines on their first burn.  Everything during the burn - and the verification tests afterward, has been as desired.  They had scheduled three test burns but cancelled the third after seeing the results of the second one. 

After the four day trip to the moon, Blue Ghost will spend 16 days in lunar orbit calibrating itself and lowering its orbit gradually.  Once pronounced ready, the landing attempt will be in Mare Crisium (the "Sea of Crises") on the eastern limb of the Earth-facing side of the moon. That shows up as 45 days after launch, or around the end of February. The New Moon is February 27 and the exact landing time is probably to be around sunrise at the Mare Crisium landing site - to maximize the lander's time.  Their website says the landing will be March 2.

Firefly rendering of Blue Ghost descending to land on the moon.  Image credit: Firefly Aerospace.

Final words to Ray Allensworth:

“The US hasn’t had a fully successful lunar mission since Apollo. To be able to do that from a commercial standpoint would be really important.”